This is our life right now

I have a favourite coping strategy and it goes sort of like this: “Give yourself (insert number of days or weeks). This crazy will be over in (that number of days or weeks) and then life will be manageable again and you’ll be able to do get to that list of things you really want to do.”

It’s not a good coping strategy. It’s living in survival mode. I feel like a lot of my life is run in a constant rush or whirlwind or copious amounts of stress and I feel like I’m just hanging in there by the skin of my teeth. But sometimes I’m good and I take my deep breaths and I settle in my space and realize that this is my moment right now. Instead of waiting for life to settle down to make it the way I want it to be I’ll get that momentarily realization that, for better or worse, this is my life right now.

As parents, our lives are happening right now too–alongside our kids’. J and W’s lives are pretty much the centre of our universe–everything we schedule or do revolves around their growth, development, and happiness. I forget that our adult lives move, progress, and coexist with J and W’s. I forget that we go through our own milestones too. Steve turned 40 last week and it made me take a moment and step back to look at the part of life that I sometimes forget to pay attention to. Is this what I pictured our life looking like at 40?

Yes and no. I pictured us settled in a house with a yard (yes). I pictured us in a quiet neighbourhood (yes). I pictured Steve being tenured (yes). I pictured more kids (no). I pictured my novel being off at a publishing house by now (no). I pictured us being healthy (yes). I pictured us frequently travelling (yes). I pictured J’s autism being much more “mild” than it is at this point in his life (yes and no–he’s made so many gains, but hasn’t “grown” out of his autism in his teenage years which I so unrealistically pictured he’d do when he was first diagnosed).

Steve is 40, I’ll be there in two-and-a-half years, and so far our lives have been the way we’ve wanted them to be and not the way we’ve wanted them to be, and it’s working for us.

I have been (unfortunately) living by my “survival mode” strategy for the last few weeks. The “one choir concert down, one more to go,” “two more weeks of homework monitoring, one week finals, and then we’re done,” “one week until I don’t have to worry about accidentally blowing the surprise part of Steve’s surprise birthday party” mindset. It got me through, but I was sort of wishing those moments of my life away at the same time.

The weekend’s done. I “survived.” The kids are out of school and Steve and I both survived his 40th birthday milestone. I’m typing this blog Sunday night for Monday right before the new kind of summer crazy starts. I’m trying really hard not to fall back into that “survival mode” coping strategy as we move into that new summer schedule of camps and weekend trips and all the other things that will be a part of of my life for the next three months.

I have a million plans for myself and the kids this summer. All of them are good and virtuous and brilliant–I promise you. That’s the personal crazy that I create for myself–because that’s who I am and that’s my wheelhouse–grandiose aspiration and ideas. I know right now I’ll be absolutely thrilled with the good and virtuous and brilliant things I check of my list and be really disappointed with the things that I don’t.

But Steve’s 40 revolutions around the sun have made me reflect on being extra mindful of my moments right now. I have 3 more years until J graduates high school. 4 more years with W. My plans are great. But my day to day “crazy” needs to be just as great too. While my daily life revolves around my kids for the next three months, I need to remember that my life is existing too and all of it is the life I need to be appreciating right now. Because “Guess what? When it comes right down to it, wherever you go, there you are.” (Jon Kabat-Zinn).

This is our life at another milestone moment.

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